


En Crue

by Shachaai



Series: History Shelf [5]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, M/M, bitter thoughts and broken romances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 17:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19728034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shachaai/pseuds/Shachaai
Summary: In January 1910, Paris floods, and a visiting Scotland finds France colder than the water.





	En Crue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [losthitsu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/losthitsu/gifts).



> Very, very belatedly crossposted from my tumblr.
> 
> For some articles, pictures and videos about the Parisian Flood in 1910, see [here](https://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n02/jeremy-harding/pavements-like-jelly), [here](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36443329), and [here](https://www.thelocal.fr/20180123/in-pictures-what-paris-looked-like-during-the-1910-flood-of-the-century).

Paris floods. That in itself is nothing new: Paris is built along the Seine, and, like all cities built on riverbanks the world over, suffers regularly for it. This January’s flood, however, is more dire than most, and is all the gossip for the bored European newspapers to latch onto as it rains and rains and _rains_.

(The Parisians use a statue attached to the Alma bridge over the Seine as a gauge for the river’s depth - a soldier whom they call the Zouave, for the French North African forces who fought and distinguished themselves in the Battle of the Alma in 1854, during the bloody Crimean War. When the river-water reaches the soldier’s feet, the Seine is flooded. _En crue._

This year, the Zouave is drowned up to his shoulders.)

The Seine, however, does not burst its banks. It’s too goddamn _French_ to be as direct as that - no, instead, the river water finds its way into the endless tunnels and pipes and drains under the city, pressurised floodwater following the paths pre-carved for it by human hands and flooding the underground walkways, train-tunnels and cellars and rising up, up, _up_ in a thick muddy froth. Like scum atop beer gone bad. The endless rain turns streets into streams, and thirteen of the twenty Parisian _arrondissements_ turn into a steaming lake. People must use _boats_ to cross some parts of the city, or walk along raised narrow boards hastily built above the water like a parade of little ducks. Tout-Paris is _disgusted_ their winter enjoyments in the city have been reduced to merely gawking at the rising river with the common people as everywhere fashionable is closed due to the floods, and, as refugees from destroyed settlements upriver arrive in the city to seek shelter and aid, Parisians leave the city in droves because their own homes are unusable whilst drowned in floodwater.

It keeps raining. 

Hair dark with wet sticking to his cheeks, France is in a foul mood. Not that he’s trying to show it - because that would be _passé_ -, but Scotland has watched the other Nation too much over the centuries _not_ to see how thin the veneer of France’s goodwill is currently over the blade of his irritation, the pettish way he had yanked off his coat and shoes. His lips spread too thin for his smiles, the movements of his elegant hands are short-sharp and quick, and all his fancy French airs and graces are being handled with their keen edge showing more often than not.

He complains very dramatically about the rain - which seems to have let up for an hour or so now they have both come _inside,_ weak winter sunlight filtering through the windows of France’s Parisian home -, and about the floodwater that sits a few inches high on his ground floor and has filled his cellar.

“It has _ruined_ my stocks of good wine.” There is a very precise _snap_ about the way France seats himself on an armchair near Scotland and begins rolling up the sodden hems of his trousers, ever the buck, like a cobra spreading its hood or an unimpressed society matron opening her mother-of-pearl fan with a flick. “You would think, perhaps, when my own city goes, as you say, to _shit_ , I could have a glass of good wine to warm my body and soothe my suffering heart - but _no!_ The wine cellar was the first thing to go.”

Scotland makes what he hopes comes across as a sympathetic noise because, although wine might not be his drink of choice, the loss of so much booze is criminal - and France deprived of his vintages is moody at best and downright _vicious_ at worst. “England invested in a drinks cabinet for Christmas just past. In the parlour.”

A ‘gift for the household.’ It had been the first decent thing the _Sassenach_ had done for a while, even if it had been fueled by his own rising alcoholism, bringing the booze upstairs so Scotland didn’t have to traipse his way down to the cellar every time his own stash of alcohol ran out and he needed a dram.

Unimpressed with Scotland’s attempts at sympathy, France gives him the stink-eye. “You _cannot,_ ” he hisses, only still barely on the edge of politeness, “keep two dozen cases of Burgundy in _a drinks cabinet,_ Écosse.”

Scotland does not wince, exactly, but he must look suitably cowed enough for France to go back to- to only just not ignoring him, the French Nation heaving out a little irritated breath as he carefully undoes his hose garters and begins unrolling the sad wet disaster that has become of his cashmere socks. Fashionable French shoes had not withstood ever-rising rain and floodwater, and so France’s finely-boned feet emerge from their socks damp and amphibious, a pale white that almost seems blue against the rug in the January light. His toes spread against the floor, unsurely grounded, the way France always looks on the wet sand of a seashore, waves lapping at his ankles.

Scotland, quite sensibly, had turned up in Paris wearing three layers of warm woollen socks, and thick dependable boots that laced halfway up his calves. They were ugly as fuck and everyone had told him so save Wales (and Wales had only refrained because he had a pair that were just as ugly and covered in coal dust and sheep shit), but they kept off the general wet and the mud and also, apparently, floodwater. Scotland had, of course, left his filthy boots with his coat by the top of the stairs (the first dry area he’d come to in France’s home) so he wasn’t trekking puddles all over his host’s house, but his own feet are still warm and dry in their layers of equally warm dry socks, so Scotland is doing his very best to keep his long legs tucked in so he doesn’t accidentally wiggle his toes in France’s direction and somehow cause an international incident by being accused of mocking France.

The _Sassenach_ had taken the easier job. England is in fucking _Bhutan._ Or, more likely, England is in fucking India, fucking India, whilst dealing with fucking Bhutan - and Scotland doesn’t know or give a fuck if that last _fucking_ is an adjective or a verb, because he has never met Bhutan and _really_ doesn’t want to know if the other Nation is his little shit of a brother’s ‘type’ to take as a bedpartner or not. Either way, England gets the simple diplomacy that is getting Bhutan’s first Druk Gyalpo to sign away his people’s rights to decide their own external affairs - in return for British support in the region and Britain’s promise to avoid meddling in their _internal_ affairs -, and then go down south to enjoy British India and all its parties in the gay cool season.

_Scotland_ gets a sullen France and Paris doing its best impression of Venice. ‘Maintaining friendly relations,’ as though anyone _really_ believes the Entente Cordiale is worth the paper it’s written on.

France is still vexed. He leaves his socks and their garters on the floor like a kelpie’s discards or drowned things washed up after a storm, stalking away through his home with his hair and clothes still sticking to him - and, though he’ll not admit it, Scotland is not the type to deny himself the pleasure of watching him go. The muscles of France’s back move his clinging shirt attractively in the weak light, broad French shoulders sluicing down the gutter-spout to his tapered waist.

France returns with the heavy bottle of ginger liqueur Scotland had brought as a gift for his host, the same bright dangerous glint to his eyes as there is in the light on the glass tumblers carried through between long fingers and thumb. It’s good stuff, the liqueur, perfect in the shitty weather: a warming cordial that the quacks prescribe spasammy for the king.

It means that, though the rest of him is still chilled, France’s mouth burns hot with ginger when he deposits himself in Scotland’s lap and takes Scotland’s lips between his teeth in what others might call a kiss.

France has a cat’s confidence in his right to be there, utterly sure that Scotland won’t dump his arse down on the floor though Scotland’s sudden lax grip on his tumbler proves that gravity is an ever-present danger. France’s bare toes, the unforgiving heel of his foot, press hard into the muscle on the side of one of Scotland’s calves, and his cold thumb has found the hollow under Scotland’s jaw to dig into as France holds his head firm in place.

Scotland should push him on the floor.

Scotland does not push France on the floor - even gently - because, when it comes to France, Scotland was, is, and is depressingly likely to be for the foreseeable future every kind of and word for _fool,_ his free hand coming around France’s back to keep the other Nation on his lap instead, hand skimming over the damp cloth and firm muscle beneath it that he had been admiring not to long ago. France shudders hard at the touch, warm against cool, and his mouth parts from Scotland’s with a wet hot noise that goes directly to Scotland’s root.

“ _Écosse,_ ” says France, and reaches out, both beguiling and mildly unpleasant at the same time in all his dampness as he presses up against Scotland’s front.

Scotland’s mind scatters in all directions. France’s neck is stretched out long and pale just under his chin and close enough for Scotland to bite at his pulse, and his fingers wrap themselves around Scotland’s wrist, pads and then nails pressing into the rabbiting of the blood in his veins there. Scotland shifts, restless, pressing his palm more strongly into the bumps of France’s spine and letting France roll nearer still to him like a wave against the shore, and those nails on his wrist scratch down, down, before they take the slipping tumbler from Scotland’s hands before it can drop to the floor.

He hands it back to Scotland deliberately, sitting up and forcing Scotland’s hand into a stronger grip about the glass. His legs move, thighs tight under his trousers either side of Scotland’s own on the seat, and, though the smile on his bruised lips is courteous, his eyes are not kind.

Scotland downs the liqueur in one long swallow, and shudders himself at the way France’s gaze drops noticeably to the hard bob it makes in his throat.

France notices him noticing, and the teeth behind his smile go sharp. It makes Scotland think of kelpies again - not helped by the way France rakes back the long, slow-drying strands of his hair. The blond of it comes out like sunlight on treasure dredged up from the seafloor.

“Should we retire to my rooms?”

“…Why?” asks Scotland, because he always has and always will look every gift horse in its mouth, even with his voice gone rough from spirits swallowed down too quickly and a lethal, lovely wolf straddling his lap.

France gives him a look that is entirely deserved, because they both know that Scotland’s stupidity is reserved for the heart rather than the head. “Is it not enough my ground floor is flooded, you want to ruin the upholstery upstairs as well?”

It is worthless for Scotland to say _that is not what I meant._ There are always unspoken words in the air between the two of them that they both pretend not to hear - whether the deafness is out of self-preservation, cruelty, regret or apathy varies from year to year. These days -

Even as an eternally repining fool for a dead, one-sided romance, Scotland knows - he _knows -_ that France is a loose cannon at the moment, angry at being unable to fight the weather and even more angry at his own helplessness. France is searching for something to direct to work through his irritation, for something he can control - and Scotland is there, a Tantalus ever too easy to beg for the grapes dangled just out of reach.

Scotland would be a juggins, simple, to go to France’s bed, because France’s smile at him in the middle of a flooded Paris is not one of _fun._ This France wants company in his bed, not for who the company is, but to alleviate his own frustration, and his blatant disregard for Scotland’s feelings on the matter is not even borne out of _cruelty._

For cruelty, France would actually have to have invested some emotion into the _absence_ of what is between Scotland and him this century, instead of being invested entirely, selfishly, with himself.

(This is not the France that Scotland has dreamt of.)

Something of Scotland’s thoughts must show on his face, for France clicks his tongue, sitting upright on Scotland’s thighs with all the posture of an irritable boy-prince, imperiously bedraggled and missing his socks. “Have you anything _better_ with which to occupy your time? The walks are flooded, and I doubt an island creature like yourself would care to watch the rising river with the mob. I would take you to the cabaret for entertainment, but the rain has made even the streets of _Butte Montmartre_ run like waterfalls.”

(This is not the France Scotland has dreamt of, but it is a France being offered to him. And Tantalus, ever hungry, knew the fruit would never truly be within his grasp but, still, ever reached.)

“…We can retire,” Scotland says eventually, damning himself even before he watches France’s pink tongue dart out for a moment to lick over his own bruised lips. That settles matters further, and tightens the clench of Scotland’s fingers in the weave of France’s shirt, net and captured, wily, fairytale fish. “If that’s what you wish.”

Why, after all, break the habit of a lifetime?

France’s expression grows more pleased, but not any kinder. The light has gone more grey on his skin again, washing sallow, shifting shadows over his face - outside, the rain has begun to fall again, dripping daylight reflected on the rippling water outside the windows. More ruthlessness over France’s Parisian heart.

“I wish,” he says.

Leashed around the thing beating in his ribcage, Scotland obliges.


End file.
